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Why do dogs move us so much? Researchers pierce the secret of their expressions

2022-04-05T17:50:47.062Z


Similarities between the facial muscles of our best friends and ours facilitate interactions. Impossible to resist when he slants his mouth and glares at you: here you are, like so many other dog owners, at the mercy of your companion, ready to give him caresses and food. Science says today why Sultan, Rex and Chipie are so cute. According to a study presented this Tuesday at the Experimental Biology 2022 congress in Philadelphia, USA, there are differences in facial musculature between do


Impossible to resist when he slants his mouth and glares at you: here you are, like so many other dog owners, at the mercy of your companion, ready to give him caresses and food.

Science says today why Sultan, Rex and Chipie are so cute.

According to a study presented this Tuesday at the Experimental Biology 2022 congress in Philadelphia, USA, there are differences in facial musculature between dogs and wolves that make our friend closer to us than his ancestor in his expressions.

And its domestication by humans is not unrelated to this metamorphosis.

The study focuses on the anatomy of two tiny muscles used to form facial expressions, known as mimetic muscles, the so-called orbicularis muscle of the mouth and zygomaticus major muscle.

Their contraction depends on long cells called fibers, of which there are several types: fast-twitch fibers which, as their name suggests, allow expressions to be formed quickly and slow-twitch fibers which are more efficient for long movements.

In humans, whose facial gestures are rich, the former dominate in the two muscles studied.

Read alsoWhy are there small dogs and big ones?

By comparing the mimetic muscles of canines, Anne Burrows and Madisen Omstead, professors at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found that fast-twitch fibers were also significantly more numerous in dogs (66-95%) than in the gray wolf (25%, on average).

Conversely, slow-twitch fibers were only present at about 10% in the domestic species, against 29% in its wild “cousin”.

A unique look!

The study thus suggests that the dog, thanks to faster facial muscles, was able to communicate more easily with humans.

His better facial mobility allows him, for example, to raise an eyebrow or to bark, where the wolf howls, in a longer movement.

A previous study published in 2019 by the same team of researchers had also shown that the dog has a muscle around the eye that the wolf does not have and which would be responsible for its raised eyebrow and its touching gaze. .

Read alsoSize of the household, experience of the master: how dogs are disturbed by their environment

Dogs diverged genetically from wolves over 30,000 years ago during the process of domestication.

For the authors of this new research, it is very likely that humans have selected dogs with facial expressions similar to theirs.

A far from fanciful hypothesis.

Older works affirm that the drooping ears of dogs would be the result of this same selection.

An experiment carried out in the 1950s in Russia by geneticists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut showed that by choosing the most docile of foxes, we obtained in a few generations brave animals with drooping ears and quick to wag their tails!

Source: leparis

All tech articles on 2022-04-05

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